Conundrum (20 page)

“Wait, so these RTGs are radioactive?”

“Well, the
p
lutonium 238 only had a half-life of about eighty-seven years. But you don’t just get exposed that easily. It doesn’t penetrate the skin like exposure to a nuclear bomb. You’d have to ingest the
radiation
somehow, to get
it
into your internal organs.” Ed looked at me and must have seen where I was going with this line of reasoning.

“Look, we didn’t build the things—we designed them, honey. Your dad worked on a chalkboard
;
he didn’t handle radioactive material. That was done in a different location, nowhere near our facility. Once they were built and the radioactive material housed and encased, they were perfectly safe to handle. Penwell built
loads
of these things, without incident. They’re still used by the Navy and Air Force, with no problem.”

The phone rang and I sipped my coffee, forcing it down, while Ed spoke to someone for a couple of minutes. I heard him say,
“
O
kay
,
come on over, if you must.
”
He didn’t seem very happy when he hung up.

“Maybe I should go. I’ve taken up enough of your time
,
and you’ve been gracious to show me these photos.”

“Oh, don’t rush off. That was my daughter. Says she has to bring me something. Can’t imagine what that’d be. I hardly ever see her.”

His voice reeked of bitterness. I thumbed through more of his journals while he tried to contain his coughing. It seemed to escalate as I sat there looking at pictures of various airplanes and machinery I couldn’t identify. I tired to imagine my father working in an office, writing equations on his chalkboard, throwing ideas around with his coworkers. I looked at Ed.

“Would you mind if I borrowed this?” I held up the one magazine that featured all the Penwell employees in my father’s department.

“No, sure, honey. Take it.”

“Do you remember someone named Dave Lerner?”

Ed nodded as he tried to calm his chest. He
plodded
into the other room and pulled out an oxygen tank that rolled on a platform with wheels. He put the mask over his mouth and breathed steadily for a moment. When he lowered the mask, his voice was hoarse. “Sure. Dave worked at Penwell for a long time. Till he retired, I think. But he was still in LA when I relocated up here. Probably still down there.”

“Did he know my father well?”

“I guess so. They worked together on just about everything.”

The doorbell rang. I decided to broach the topic of the experiment one more time. “My mother said she ran into Dave Lerner years later,” I said, following Ed to the door. “That he told her he knew of others from their department who had been exposed to radiation and who had died. Other men who had gone to San Diego.”

Ed’s hand stopped halfway to the doorknob. He gave me a stern look. “Honey, why
be
labor
this? Who knows what really happened? You’re never going to get answers. And all those years—it was so long ago.”

He sounded just like my mother. And just as cagey. Was I overly suspicious of everyone, or was there a reason Ed Hutchinson seemed to be hiding something? I stepped back as he opened the door.

“Well, look at you, all dolled-up
,
” Ed said acerbically to the tall blond
-haired
woman standing on the threshold. “Come on in.” He gestured to me. “Julie, this is Lisa Sitteroff. This is my one and only child—Julie.”

I smiled. “Well, my last name is now Bolton. Nice to meet you.” I shook her hand and met her friendly eyes. She looked like a model from
Cosmo
, dressed in a slinky top and tight jeans, her hair styled to perfection. I never looked that good any time of day, let alone nine o’clock in the morning. I guessed Julie to be about my age.
“But I’m just leaving
.
 
.
 
.
”

Julie rested a hand on my arm as Ed marched toward the kitchen. “Please,” she said in a
stern
whisper, “stay for just a minute more.”

I caught an urgent expression in her eyes. What in the world was that about?

“All right. But I should be getting to work.”

Ed called
out
from the kitchen. His voice was thick with irritation. “So what did you bring me, that you had to come right over?”

Julie held her
perfectly manicured
hand up to me, asking me to wait. She went into the kitchen and hushed whispers followed. The tension in their relationship drifted to my ears. I kept standing by the door, fiddling with my purse, clutching the Penwell brochure
s
. A few minutes passed, some coughing ensued, and I grew more uncomfortable, hearing the rising tone in their voices. Julie strode back to the door, her face flushed. She seemed angry and struggling to contain her feelings.

“I really should go
.
 
.
 
.
” I said.

Julie pressed something into my hand. A business card. She lowered her voice and leaned close to me. I heard Ed lapse into a coughing frenzy in the kitchen. “Lisa, I have to talk to you. It’s terribly important. Please call me at noon, at my office number. I’ll come see you.”

I studied her face, puzzled by her intensity. What could she possibly have to say to me, a complete stranger? Had she mistaken me for someone else?

She didn’t give me a chance to ask any questions. Her father walked toward us, dragging his oxygen tank. Julie pasted on a smile and turned to her father.

“
Dad
, Lisa needs to leave.” She opened the door for me
,
and the warm morning breeze drifted in. The bright sun hurt my eyes
,
and I reached in my purse for my sunglasses.

Julie stood between me and her father, so all I could do was give a little wave. “Thank you, Ed, for seeing me. I really appreciate it. I hope—well, I hope you feel better.” My words sounded stupid. What do you say to someone who is dying—get well soon? I nodded at Julie
,
who mouthed words to me as her father came up behind her.
Call me. Noon
. I nodded again.

“Thanks, honey,” Ed said to me
.
“Come visit anytime. Just make it this year, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

Julie stepped back inside. I heard the door close
briskly
behind me, and I felt disoriented and befuddled. I looked at the card Julie gave me. She worked at a realty office in Cupertino, and went by the last name Hutchinson.
I assumed that meant she wasn’t married.
There was nothing written on the back, nothing to shed any light on this odd encounter or her urgent request to speak with me. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what in the world she could possibly need to say to me. I supposed I would just have to wait three hours to find out.

As I got in my car, I looked back at the door to Ed’s house. I pictured the guard standing in front of the door to enlightenment, waiting for me to ask the only correct question that would grant me entrance. Everywhere I went, I saw doors. I heard the witch in Macbeth chant
,
“
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, whoever knocks.
”
Ed Hutchinson had been guarded, hiding something. I brought to mind the small photo of him in his dashing younger days, standing next to my father beside the SNAP generator.

My hand stopped in the air as I lifted the key to the ignition. My breath caught as I shook an outrageous thought from my head. I chastised myself for my wild imagination and started the engine. I didn’t believe in coincidences, but I did trust my intuition. And in that moment my intuition told me Julie Hutchinson had something earth-shattering to tell me.

Chapter
13

I felt about to crawl out of my skin.

With two hours to kill before calling Julie, I needed to do something. My visit with Ed Hutchinson
had
left me irritable and tense.
Scraps
of conversation with my mother at the restaurant kept nipping at my thoughts like
annoying
mosquitoes. I fought the urge to pull my car over on some shady suburban street and sleep.
When stressed, m
y brain often went numb and my thoughts drifted, unfocused, leaving me in a stupor. Maybe that was my
survival instinct kicking in
.
Go find a dark place to hide and wait out the danger.

I stopped by Raff’s house after I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.
I rang the bell and listened for footsteps, thinking of my mother just a few miles away. My stomach clenched, imagining her puttering around her house, Neal cleaning up after her, her grumbling about me and Jeremy. What went on behind those closed doors? Conspiracy? Did my brothers even know what she was up to, trying to squeeze money from us, trying to beat us into submission? Did they even care?

Kendra opened the door. She was dressed in a casual top and jeans, her hair a little out of place. She looked like she hadn’t slept well in a long while. Her voice lacked welcome, although she managed a smile.

“Hi
,
Lisa, what brings you here?”

I waited, but she didn’t invite me in. I backed up a step. Kendra never liked surprises. Or people randomly dropping in without notice. I could never call her last
-
minute and ask her to meet me for lunch. It had to be planned weeks ahead and reconfirmed at least three times. Her eyes told me in a subtle flicker that I had broken protocol.

“Just thought I’d see how Raff was doing. Is he home?”

“Well, no.” She shut her mouth as if worried some other words might leak out.

“So, he’s back at work? That’s great—”

Kendra shook her head. “He’s at the doctor’s. Trying to rework his meds.”

Meaning, the drugs weren’t keeping his monsters at bay. I let out a breath. “I’m sorry. This has got to be tough on you, on the kids.”

Kendra’s face drew tighter. My attempt to commiserate with her was backfiring.
I had crossed over the neutral zone and was igniting hostilities.
I changed tacks. “Well, he’s got the best psychopharmacologist in the Bay Area. I know something will work. And Raff is strong and determined. He won’t give up.”

Her look told me she didn’t agree. And
then I thought
that maybe it wasn’t Raff who wanted to quit. I’d heard my brother gripe about his marriage, how if it weren’t for his kids, he and Kendra would have split up years ago. I knew she swore to stand by Raff, for better or for worse, but the
current
“worse” was not conducive to healing their troubled relationship.

I shuddered at the thought of Kendra walking out on Raff, taking the kids back to Ohio to live with her parents. That would send my brother over the edge. And surely Kendra knew that. The pressure was on her to keep the home environment as stable as possible, but I wondered how long she was willing to give it a go. That calm, controlled
exterior
was beginning to crack.

Raff had told me he had been misdiagnosed for years. That his episodes of bipolar depression didn’t match the usual patterns. Even his psychiatrist had pooh-poohed his
insistence on
admit
ting
himself into the hospital. Told him he was suffering from stress, too much overtime at the bank.
Unlike most afflicted with his illness,
Raff’s up
-
and
-
down cycles spread across years, not months or weeks. He’d have a whole year where he leaned toward a manic high-flying exuberance, followed by a year of spiraling downward to a crash.

His senior year in high school
had been
marked by outrageous risk-taking and laissez-faire—to use the French term he liked to throw around. He had gone to Paris with his Honors French class that summer after graduation and ended up nearly arrested and thrown in prison. I recall my mother listening in horror as Raff bragged how he climbed a flagpole in front of the French Embassy and detached the flag from its clips, then scooted to the ground and proceeded to do a victory dance across the lawn, waving the flag in
—
what he learned later
—
was blatant disrespect. The gendarme
s
came at him with pistols drawn and handcuffed him. In his perfectly mastered French he weaseled his way out, explaining how, in America, students studying French kept a tradition on Bastille Day—in honor of the storming of the Bastille in 1789—that involved jimmying up flagpoles and retrieving such flags in the manner in which he had performed. Somehow the police found his enthusiastic tale heartwarming, and they let him go with a warning that such patriotic proclivities, although appreciated, were not legal in France.